


Clickjack

by Michael_McGruder



Series: IX [6]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Gen, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 00:35:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3361265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michael_McGruder/pseuds/Michael_McGruder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Boys are lured into a snare by an enemy with a familiar face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clickjack

**Author's Note:**

> This story refers to events that occurred in Config.Sys and Wabi Sabi, but I don't think you'll be too lost if you haven't read those first.
> 
> This story also commandeered my attention while brainstorming a RHPS sort of crossover. It became something entirely different almost immediately, but one line was kept from that original halfhearted attempt, because I found it amusing. Don't read too much into it.

_Cold._

_Hunger._

_Pain._

_That was all the symbiote knew. This body was dead, decaying all around it. It had long ago run out of food. In desperation it had begun to cannibalize parts of its own body. The bits it needed the least. The Kinitawowi seemed to have a lot of extra bits._

_But now there was hardly anything left to hold the rotting pieces of flesh and bone together, except gristle and sinew._

_There was only once chance. With the last reserves of energy it had, it ambled the hideous corpse towards the domed structure in the snow. A man made structure._

_Soon it would find a new host._

 

Red Dwarf drifted through the alien solar system, lazily passing by the outer planets like a bloated whale through distant buoys.

Kryten was in the drive room, monitoring the stellar cartography maps, hoping to identify the system. Red Dwarf’s data library was hopelessly out of date by the Nova 5’s standards, and the Nova 5’s data was hopelessly out of date by anyone’s standards.

By chance, this solar system did happen to be registered in Red Dwarf’s data banks, but only by the ID number 12.22-DBF. Kryten cross referenced his own files for any further information. He came up with a listing for Transylvania.

Kryten blinked. He checked again. 12.22-DBF was the ident number for the Transylvanian system in his data banks. He wasn’t entirely sure that his information wasn’t corrupted, but since he was the most advanced machine on Red Dwarf, a prospect that gave everyone cold sweats now and then, he supposed it was Transylvania until proven otherwise.

As the ship approached one of the inner planets, the computer terminal detected a distress beacon.

Kryten pulled up the details of the signal. He traced it to a laboratory on the planet Transsexual. Kryten reread the dossier. The mechanoid frowned as a familiar sense of foreboding settled into his CPU.

 

Lister, Rimmer, and the Cat were in the sleeping quarters, having an argument.

Rimmer couldn’t remember how it started, but he’d been sick of it from the beginning. For some reason Lister and the Cat just would not drop it.

“Look,” the Cat said. “You can dress it up however you want, you can put whatever face on it you want, and take it to dinner, but sex with an android is just masturbation. You can’t have a relationship with it anymore than you can have a relationship with a vibrator.”

“I’m not talking about a brothel droid, or a blow up doll, I’m talking about one with sentience, with personality.”

“You can get talking vibrators, bud,” the Cat said.

The Talkie sex toys were the least popular of the Talkie series of gadgets. Too many people found themselves in the hideously embarrassing situation of having their toys loudly suggesting a wank from their hiding places, usually while Granny or the in-laws were visiting.

“I mean something that has free agency, something that can choose to say no if it wants. That’s the difference between service and a relationship,” Lister argued.

The Cat just shook his head. The way he saw it, you either had sex with a living thing, or it was just a wank.

“What about Kryten, or Rimmer?” Lister asked.

“Leave me out of this,” Rimmer said indignantly.

“They’re both AI’s. What if I hooked up with one of them?” Lister ignored the way Rimmer’s face turned scarlet.

“As repulsive and depraved as the notion is, they’re just machines,” the Cat said coolly. Rimmer bristled, notoriously sensitive about his status as a hologram. “It would be like me having sex with you. Practically bestiality.”

“Thanks a lot,” Lister said.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the Cat continued. “I’m not saying don’t do it. There’s almost nothing on this ship I haven’t had sex with.” Rimmer and Lister cringed. “But that doesn’t mean I want to go steady with the sofa.”

“Which sofa?” Rimmer demanded as Kryten walked in.

“Sirs, we’re picking up a distress signal on one of the planets.”

“Which planet?”

“Transsexual.”

“Come again?”

“There’s a bioresearch facility on the planet Transsexual, in the Transylvanian system.”

“Kryten,” Rimmer said patiently. “Have you switched your intake and your refuse again? Because you’re talking utter shit.”

“Does it really matter what the planet is called?” Kryten sighed.

“Yes, of course it does, modo!” Rimmer insisted. “If the planet was called Infected Anal Fissure, you wouldn’t really be inclined to pop by and see what the weather’s like, would you?”

Lister rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Starbug, ten minutes.”

 

“What kind of place did you say this was?” Lister asked as Starbug approached the mountain range the signal was coming from.

“A bioresearch laboratory. This facility specialized in experimental life form manufacture.”

“What?” asked the Cat as he piloted the ship towards a domed structure tucked away in the snow.

“A GELF farm.”

“And we’re going to go in there?” Rimmer demanded. “Where some mad scientist has incensed a hoard of mutant freaks who want nothing more than to tear off the limbs of anything possessing them and play the Moby Dick drum solo on their mangled corpse?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Lister replied flippantly.

“No thanks. Turn this Bug around, now.”

“I’m afraid we can’t, sir,” Kryten explained. “We seem to have been caught in the facility’s guidance beam. If we try to wrench free, we could cause serious damage to Starbug’s engines.”

Rimmer threw himself into is seat, moaning.

 

_The symbiote roamed the dark, echoing halls of the building in a rage. Everyone was dead. Not just dead, but_ dead _dead. They’d been dead for centuries, leaving behind only dust and bones._

_The symbiote wailed in frustrated despair. It was so close, and now it would die in these cold metal halls. It was just about to lay down in the cargo bay and accept The Sleep when its remaining good eye spotted something in the corner._

_Crawling now, the symbiote heaved the rotting bulk to the box. It was a cryopod. Inside was a man. Dead, damaged, but preserved and whole. If the symbiote could have made the Kinitawowi smile, it would have. Hosts were so much easier to manage when they were already dead. They didn’t last as long, but it didn’t have to fight for control, and at the moment the symbiote wouldn’t have had the strength._

_Using the last screed of energy it possessed, it opened the pod and leaned over the man. It opened the jaw of the GELF, which summarily dropped onto the man’s chest, and wiggled free of its used host, burrowing into the body of its new one._

_When they had become fully assimilated, the symbiote was staggered by a suffocating explosion of pain, and considered this may have been a mistake._

 

Lister and the Cat were armed with bazookoids as Kryten lead them deeper into the dark halls of the laboratory, eyes glued to his psi-scan. Rimmer had stayed behind in Starbug. He still wasn’t physically fit or coordinated enough to be much use in a possible bazookoids fight, not that he could be relied on for such a thing in the best of circumstances.

“Getting anything, Kryten?” Lister asked, checking for the seventh time that his mining laser was loaded.

“A lot of interference. I’m tracking the source of the signal, but I’m having difficulty locking in on any life signs.”

“What about you, Cat? Smell anything?” The Cat tilted his head up, his nostrils flaring.

“Something. Something familiar. Smells kinda like one of your fry ups.” The Cat knew he’d smelled this scent before. It was driving him crazy. As they moved further down, the Cat remembered. “Oh man. You’re not gonna like this.”

Before he could finish, a shape ambled out of one of the laboratory offices. Hunched and moaning. All three crew members trained their torches on the man. The burnt face of Arnold Rimmer looked back at them.

 

Lister and the Cat carried the human Rimmer, moaning and writhing in agony, back to Starbug as quickly as they could. The Cat only complained minimally about the prospect of getting charred flesh all over his suit, and that the smell would never come out.

Depositing the man on one of the beds in the medibay, Kryten quickly injected him with a sedative painkiller cocktail. Lister spotted Rimmer poking his head in the door to see what the commotion was about.

He stood in the entryway looking faint, watching the scene for only a few moments before retreating back to the cockpit.

“Is that the smeg who I think it is?” Lister finally asked. Kryten nodded in confirmation as he inserted a respirator tube. “How?”

“I’m afraid I have no answers at the moment,” Kryten apologized. The Cat shook his head as the mechanoid administered an intravenous line.

“I don’t think I have to remind everyone about what happened the last time we had two of him around.”

“We can’t just leave him here,” Lister said. The Cat wore an expression that begged to differ. “Just get us back to Red Dwarf as fast as you can.” The urgency in Lister’s voice prevented the Cat from arguing.

“This is… our Rimmer, from the ship? The one the nanobots…” Lister struggled as he watched Kryten bandage up the worst burns.

“The psi-scan indicates so.”

_“How?”_ Lister asked again.

“We may be able to find out more if he survives treatment aboard Red Dwarf.”

 

“Why the smeg haven’t we taken off yet?” Lister demanded as he entered the cockpit. He glanced over at Rimmer, who looked pale and shaken, fiercely gripping the top of his cane as though it where the only thing grounding him.

“We’re still stuck in the docking system. I can’t get it to release,” the Cat explained as he batted at several buttons and levers.

“We may have to return to the facility to manually release the system,” Kryten said.

“I’ll go with you,” Rimmer volunteered.

“You what?” Lister asked.

“I’m not staying here with _him._ We shouldn’t have even brought him on board.”

“Hey, that’s what I’ve been saying,” Cat agreed. “That’s two for ditching the crispy no-Goalpost Head. Anyone for a tie break?”

“What is wrong with you two?” Lister said. “We are not leaving anyone sick and injured down here, no matter who they are.”

“How about undead?” the Cat said. Rimmer shot him a dark look, but didn’t argue the point.

“I don’t know what the story is, but we’ll find out when we get back to Red Dwarf. Rimmer, go with Kryten and try and figure out how to release Starbug.”

Rimmer bolted out of the cockpit before the Cat could argue why he couldn’t go instead. Kryten tested his radio connection and followed the hologram out.

 

Lister and the Cat slunk into the medibay, both edgy and tense. Rimmer lay on the scanning table, still unconscious.

“Cat,” Lister said in a hushed voice. “Can you… can you tell if that’s the same Rimmer… from the Tank?”

“He smells the same,” the Cat said, pulling a face that suggested he wasn’t very comfortable with the scent invading his nasal passages. “But there’s something else too.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never smelled it before.” The Cat furrowed his brow and approached the supine man. If he’d had a tail, it would be switching back and forth. It was difficult to smell anything beyond the burned flesh. But there was definitely some kind of foreign undertone.

As the Cat leaned closer, Rimmer opened his eyes and jerked on the bed. Both Lister and the Cat screamed, leaping back five feet, as the man, disoriented and in pain, struggled with the tubes and IV lines he was connected to.

He pulled at his wrappings and fumbled clumsily with the IV needles, yanking them out, thin lines of blood running down the torn punctures. He gagged and choked around the breathing tube.

“Smeg, smeg, should we pull it out?” Lister asked, panicking. He didn’t know what to do, desperately wishing Kryten were here.

They cringed, watching Rimmer pull out his breathing tube, slick with saliva and blood. He bent over the bed, coughing and gagging. Lister raced over, pushing him back onto the bed before he fell over on his face. Rimmer struggled weakly beneath his grip.

“Cat, load up another one of those pain killer tranqs.”

The Cat loaded a phial of the purple fluid into the administering gun while Lister held Rimmer down. He stared up at Lister with those scabbed, sightless, accusing eyes from his nightmares.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Lister whispered. Hands reached up to his shoulders, sliding away as dead skin sloughed off on his jacket. Lister held back the urge to retch.

The Cat pressed the muzzle of the gun to Rimmer’s neck, pulling the trigger and injecting another dose of tranquilizer, reducing the man to dead weight.

The pair allowed themselves a moment to bring their heart rates back down. Lister shrugged off his soiled jacket, dropping it into one of the medical bins for the time being.

“Why don’t you try to radio Kryten and see what’s keeping them, yeah?” Lister suggested though a deep breath.

“Yeah, good idea,” the Cat said, heading back to the cockpit.

 

“We should leave him here.”

“Beg your pardon, sir?”

Rimmer scowled as he hobbled alongside Kryten, shining his torch down the dark corridors.

“I was here first, we don’t need two of me.”

“Sir, if I may remind you, Space Corps directive 111 clearly states that living crew members take precedence over hologramatic ones. If it came down to a choice, I’m afraid you would be the redundancy.”

Rimmer was rolling his eyes and shaking his head by the time Kryten got to “if I may remind you.” His bitter green eyes narrowed on the mechanoid. The seedy little git was always looking for ways to get rid of him, even if it meant replacing him with himself.

“But he’s _not_ a living crew member. He died. I remember that _quite_ vividly,” he said with a shudder.

“It’s a mystery, sir, but one we’re obligated to solve once we’ve stabilized, um, err… the man. We would assist any injured, regardless of who they were.”

Not having a compelling counterargument, Rimmer resolved to muttering darkly to himself.

“I think I’ve found the control room,” Kryten said, flashing his torch on a door with CONTROL ROOM painted on it in bold red letters. He studied the console as Rimmer nervously eyed a mangled skeleton heaped in one of the dusty chair.

“What’s the problem?” Rimmer demanded.

“It appears that the Doppler radar has detected a significant storm in this area, and has subsequently locked out the dock. Until the storm passes, I’m afraid we’re grounded.”

“Fan-smegging-tastic,” Rimmer growled. Kryten’s radio crackled to life.

“Yo buds, you better get back here. Non-Goalpost Head is twitching like a cat on bad nip.”

“We’re on our way,” Kryten acknowledged.

 

Lister didn’t feel qualified enough to start shoving things back into Rimmer’s body, so he put on a pair of disposable gloves and tried to clean him up a bit instead. He taped cotton balls to the IV holes in his arms and wiped away the blood, trying to be careful of the blisters and burns around his mouth.

He redressed his hands, placing them lightly on his chest. Lister winced at the struggled wheezing that was escaping him. He wasn’t sure whether or not Rimmer was aware of his presence, but he put a gentle hand on his shoulder just in case. He didn’t want him to feel alone and in pain.

“I’m sorry,” Lister said again, trying to smooth out the errant curls of hair. “We should have stayed longer. We should have waited for you. I’m sorry I let you burn alone.” He failed to keep his voice from cracking.

Rimmer lurked in the entryway, watching Lister dote on his _former_ body. What if he wasn’t dead? What if by some fluke of weird science he had survived the fire?

He listened to Lister telling the body all his regrets about the day he came back with the cure to the chameleonic microbe. They’d never really talked about it when he came back online.

True, Rimmer had been extremely aloof at the time and not really in the mood to discuss anything, but still. In the time between then and now, Lister had never mentioned any of the things he was tearfully confessing to this _corpse_. Why couldn’t he have said those things to him?

And what if the other Rimmer did recover, where did that leave him? What if only one of them could stay? Would Lister choose this man over him? Flashbacks of being ippy dippied to death were interrupted as Kryten bustled past him, fussing over the injured man.

Rimmer skulked away towards the cockpit.

“What’s the news, bud?” the Cat asked.

“We can’t take off until the storm has passed,” Rimmer said, dropping into his chair and crossing his arms. The Cat pulled a face.

“This is too creepy.”

“How do you think I feel?” Rimmer groused. The Cat shrugged.

“I figured you’d be used to it by now. You’ve got more lives than I do.”

The Cat had a point. This seemed to happen an awful lot with Rimmer. Was this how the universe got its jollies? Snuffing out one Rimmer wasn’t enough fun? It had to find ways to bring him back for one more kill?

“Besides,” the Cat interrupted Rimmer’s maudlin thoughts. “He is dead.”

“I thought you said you found him wandering around in the facility?”

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t dead.”

“Doesn’t it?” Rimmer sneered. “Well, I guess I’ll have to refresh my memory on the habits of dead people, because I always assumed their activities numbered ‘round about zero.”

Kryten returned to the cockpit, wringing his hands together and fussing.

“Mr. err, Rimmer… err, that is, the other Mr. Rimmer,” Kryten’s nervous eyes darted towards the hologram, who glowered irritably, “ehem, has been stabilized for now. But I don’t like his chances if the storm doesn’t clear up soon.” Kryten couldn’t help noticing that neither the Cat or Rimmer looked too put out by that.

 

While Lister was sitting by Rimmer’s bedside, the man’s eyes fluttered open again. Lister watched him carefully, making sure he didn’t start panicking again. Was it his imagination, or did Rimmer’s eyes look slightly clearer? They seemed to seek Lister out.

“I’m here,” Lister said quietly, placing a soft hand on his head, stroking his temple with his thumb. “You’re gonna be okay, mate. You’re safe now.” Rimmer relaxed and his eyes slipped closed again.

“Should I leave you two love birds alone?” a sour voice asked behind him. Lister turned to see Rimmer leaning heavily on his cane with a stormy look on his face.

“I don’t like seeing you like this,” Lister said, gesturing to the man on the bed.

“There’s an easy solution to that.”           

“You would really leave him here, wouldn’t you?” Lister asked, appalled.

“Yes,” Rimmer hissed. “But I suppose if he does survive, you can have a _real_ relationship with a _real_ person, rather than masturbating with an AI.” Lister pulled a face.

“You have never taken anything the Cat has said seriously, why start now?” Lister walked over to Rimmer, taking the hologram’s tense and reluctant hand. “Besides, I know he’s physically you, and there’s a part of him inside you now, but you’re not the same people.”

Rimmer seemed reluctant to let go of his indignant mood. Lister sighed.

“He and I didn’t have the same relationship you and I do, and yeah, I feel bad about that. I feel horrible for leaving him in that fire. I think about it all the time.”

Rimmer knew this was true. He knew Lister occasionally had nightmares, and would call out his name in them. When he awoke, he would always hold Rimmer tighter in bed, and would be more clingy during the day. He softened a bit.

“If he hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be here,” Rimmer said quietly.

“I know. That doesn’t mean we need to kill him again. I’m not going to turn you off.”

Rimmer had a hard time imagining a stranger love triangle. If his double survived, he couldn’t predict how he would feel about their relationship. Rimmer’s feelings for Lister in the early days were pretty nebulous, and still were, to a certain extent.

“We’ll work it out, whatever happens,” Lister assured.

There was the sound of a click and Lister collapsed boneless on the floor, leaving Rimmer staring at his duplicate, holding the tranq gun. Rimmer swallowed nervously.

“I know I said some pretty harsh things earlier, but maybe we could work out some sort of compromise?”

His double kicked his cane out from under him. As Rimmer tried to scramble away, the double grabbed his cane and swung it as hard as he could. The silver fist topper connected solidly with Rimmer’s knee, felling him with an white hot explosion of pain. A second blow struck him in the back of the head and he went very still.

The symbiote turned back to the human. Finally it would be able to shed this painful skin and once again taste a living connection. It turned the human over, leaning over him and forcing his mouth open.

Before it could free itself from its current host, it was yanked away from the human by its shoulders.

The feline held it in a painfully firm grip while the mechanoid tried to tranq him again. It stomped on the feline’s instep and knocked the mechanoid’s head back like a Rock’em Sock’em Robot with a right hook, fracturing and dislocating its two middle fingers in the process. The symbiote cursed, forgetting how fragile humans were.

When the feline grabbed it again, it jammed its elbow into his ribs. The feline sunk to his knees, clutching the cracked bones. The symbiote whirled around, knocking its knee into the side of his head, finally incapacitating him.

The symbiote took a moment to recover, wheezing heavily through a burned respiratory system. Its whole body was alive with agony. The feline would make as good a host as the human, but before it could make a move, it was rugby tackled across the room.

Rimmer struggled with his duplicate on the floor, a flurry of fists and elbows and knees. The symbiote was a better scrapper, but it was heavily injured. Rimmer tried to detach his mind from the fact that burned skin was peeling from his former body like tissue paper. The smell was abominable.

When a knee rocketed into his testicles, Rimmer lost his grip on his duplicate, who dashed out of the room. Feeling nauseous and seeing grey, he slipped into soft light, numb relief instantly washing over him. He knew it was a dangerous tactic, as it left his fragile light bee vulnerable.

Rimmer raced after his duplicate, losing him as he ran into Starbug’s cockpit, locking the heavy steel door behind him. Rimmer cursed as he heard the engines start up. The storm had either passed, or the duplicate was going to wreck their engines trying to escape the docking bay. Either way, Rimmer had to stop him.

He looked around quickly. The cockpit door was blast proof. Shooting it open with a bazookoid was impossible. He might be able to fit his light bee through one of the small ventilation shafts.

Rimmer switched back to hard light and swayed as the pain of the fight hit him again. He doubled over, leaning on the table in the midsection, trying to breathe through the waves of pain as his head, knee, and groin competed for attention.

He was thrown off his feet as the craft inelegantly jerked from its idling position. As Starbug started to take off, Rimmer climbed into one of the ducts, switching back to soft light, wiggling his light bee through the slats in the ventilation grill.

The doppelganger was reaming the thrusters as hard as he could, forcing Starbug out of the dock’s guidance beam. The grinding roar of Starbug’s engines was almost deafening. Rimmer dropped into the cockpit, and was once again flung across the room as Starbug was finally wrenched free, like the twisted wisdom tooth from a jaw.

“You’re going to kill us all,” Rimmer shouted as one of the engines failed halfway in their ascent. The doppelganger didn’t seem to care as he continued pushing the remaining engine.

Starbug staggered away from the mountain like a drunk bumblebee. If they rose any higher, everyone would certainly be killed when the second engine inevitably failed.

Rimmer growled in frustration and punched the cockpit release code into the key panel beside the door and yanked the lever.

 

The head of Starbug detached from its thorax, dropping town the face of the mountain. It bounced painfully once, twice, three times before rolling down the steep incline, finally coming to rest as it crashed into the jagged ocean rocks below.

The rest of the craft awkwardly spun and descended, the remaining landing jets just barely keeping the ship from creating a new crater in the side of the mountain. It landed with a hideous crunch, its landing legs snapping underneath it, bulkheads splitting at the seams, twisted shards of flaming metal flinging in every direction.

The ship groaned and settled, and finally there was silence.

 

When Lister, Kryten, and the Cat stumbled out of the wreckage, miraculously still intact, they began the process of sussing out the details and assessing the damage. It didn’t take them very long to find the trail of destruction leading to the site of the cockpit’s crash. It did take them slightly longer to access the site, as the side of the mountain dropped off in sheer cliffs.

The round head of Starbug had been cracked open like an egg, half sunk in the ocean. They found Rimmer’s body submerged in the water, pinned between the console and a crushed bulkhead. Both he and the symbiote were finally dead.

Even though he knew Rimmer had already been dead, seeing him in that watery grave was deeply unsettling, and Lister knew he’d have another theme to his nightmares.

They continued their search for Rimmer or his light bee. Lister prayed to a cold, godless universe that it hadn’t been lost in the sea. The Cat finally found it lodged in the safety glass of the front screen. They returned to what was left of Starbug before attempting to turn him on.

The hologram seemed shaken, but functional, and filled in the rest of the crew on the details of the crash.

They sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, looking at the wreck.

“How long do you think it’s going to take to fix the Bug?” Lister asked, not really wanting to know the answer. Kryten frowned.

“I think we’ll be here for quite a while.”


End file.
